How to extract text from your ICHAT file
- Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your ICHAT file.
- You’ll see a preview, if available.
- Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert ICHAT to another file type
To convert your ICHAT file to another format, you need Apple Messages or other Text software.
- ICHAT to TEXT
- ICHAT to TXT
- ICHAT to RTF
- ICHAT to DOC
- ICHAT to DOCX
- ICHAT to ODT
- ICHAT to PAGES
- ICHAT to TEX
- ICHAT to LATEX
- ICHAT to MD
- ICHAT to MARKDOWN
- ICHAT to LOG
Convert a file to ICHAT
To convert other file formats to the "Conversation Log" file type, you need software like Apple Messages or a similar tool.
- PDF to ICHAT
- DOC to ICHAT
- ASC to ICHAT
- TODO to ICHAT
- NFO to ICHAT
- MEMO to ICHAT
- README to ICHAT
- DOCX to ICHAT
- JPG to ICHAT
- TXT to ICHAT
- NOTE to ICHAT
- RTF to ICHAT
About ICHAT files
A .ICHAT file is a saved conversation log generated by Apple iChat or its successor, Apple Messages. These files serve as digital transcripts, archiving text messages, timestamps, and participant data from instant messaging sessions on macOS. While valuable for preserving personal history or legal records, .ICHAT files present significant accessibility challenges. They are often stored as binary Property Lists (bplist), meaning they cannot be read by standard text editors like Notepad and are natively completely inaccessible on Windows, Linux, or mobile devices. Furthermore, as Apple updates the Messages app, older .ICHAT formats may become incompatible with modern macOS versions, effectively locking your data away in an obsolete container. To ensure long-term access and cross-platform readability, the best solution is to convert these logs into PDF documents for secure archiving, HTML for browser-based viewing that mimics the original chat style, or TXT files for raw data parsing.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ICHAT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted CHAT, _DS_STORE, PLIST, 21, HTML, TXT, DB, FLA, CISO, ZIP and TEXT files.
The ICHAT Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ICHAT converter.